Development FAQ

For new business websites that best place to start is to review the top ranked websites in your industry — this will give you an initial understanding of the pages that are commonly included for your business type and the typical content options of each page type. To learn more we encourage you to view the development section of our website, specifically our First Website FAQ page.  After you’ve got a sense of what’s needed please email us and we’ll get back to you promptly so we can discuss your specific development needs.

Once the website has been fully paid for you will own it and there is no monthly fee of use.  Please review our client services agreement to learn more about our policies.

While a responsive design with modern coding is best, we understand that not everyone can afford to redevelop their website.  We are pleased to assist you with updating your website no matter how old.  We have worked most CMS and HTML versions, including HTML4, XHTML, Joomla 1.2, etc.  We provide updates for older websites per our hourly rate, and provide a free initial assessment that covers the visual look, content, and SEO.

All of our websites are customized for the business, so a cost estimate is based upon the projects needs, not arbitrarily packaged. Our clients only pay for what they specifically need, and the final cost is representative of only the work that has been done.  That being said, we do provide a 20% discount on our Advanced SEO service when ordered with a new web website or full development, and we provide a year of free Starter Hosting for new business websites when the estimate exceeds $1000.

For websites that exceed $1000 we split up the website cost in four payments (20%, 30%, 30%, 20%).  For projects that exceed $3000, we are pleased to set up a low-cost monthly payment plan that will work with your budget and finances.

Since E. Curtis Designs is a small company we don’t have a lot of overhead expense and we do our own Internet marketing; and we believe that providing a great service at an affordable price will result in future design projects and referrals from our clients. If you’ve done a bit of searching, you will have noted that most designers either don’t mention their pricing or charge at least twice as much as we do. Our philosophy is that a website needs to be affordable, both in its development and ongoing management for the small business to succeed.

Initially we’ll want to review your existing website, social media pages, logo and/or marketing material, where available. If there are websites that you’ve seen which you feel are representative of the look that you want in your own website please email us the links to them and note what you like about each. Next we’ll ask for a list of the pages you want to add to your website, how you want them titled, and an overview of what each page will contain. Once development starts we’ll ask for the text and image content for each page, as well as any supplemental content (PDF, Excel, Video, etc) that you want added.  You can learn more about our development process on our Development Steps page.

Typically it is the client’s responsibility to write the text for the web pages, and to ensure that it is web-ready (proofed for spelling, grammar, and completeness).  Our belief is that it is best for the client to write the text for the pages so as to reflect their own style and business/industry knowledge.  That being said, we have extensive experience with sourcing and writing copy for web pages, and will be pleased to assist you with content creation per our hourly rate if needed.

There are a lot of factors that will affect a website’s ranking, which is primarily how long the domain has been registered, the amount of keyword optimized text on the primary pages, the number of quality in-bound links, and the amount of competition within the industry.  For this reason we can’t guarantee a high ranking (using organic methods) and those who say they can are misleading you. Since all the websites we design are optimized for SEO most of our clients achieve a high search engine ranking after a few months, or sooner for established domains, and many are ranked #1 in their industry. We also provide advanced SEO services, which includes recommendations for layout, content, and meta-tag choices that will help in your site’s ranking.

Content Management System (CMS) websites include an administrative access panel for making site changes, whereas traditional HTML5 websites will require someone with coding knowledge to make the site changes. If you are interested in making site changes yourself or intend to have a blog, please let us know that you want a CMS website.

We maintain websites per our hourly rate — $40 /hr. Updates are billed to the quarter-hour — changes that take 15-min or less are $10.00, and we invoice our clients per our 3-month billing cycle.

Once all content has been received, most smaller websites can be completed within a couple of weeks, medium-sized websites within a month, and large websites within a couple of months. There are of course factors that can slow down development, which commonly are incomplete content and/or additional content requests after development has been started, and delays in email response and development feedback.

When a client is unclear on the design style wanted and/or there are a lot of layout options that could work well we will provide several demos of varied type for assessment purposes.  From the feedback received we narrow down the list and provide our recommendations, as well as comments on how the primary features can be used effectively.  Once a client has chosen the layout they prefer we edit the layout’s styling per your specific development needs and utilize its best features for content presentation.

When we provide an estimate we allow for approximately 30 minutes of routine change requests per page to stay within the estimate range. If ongoing changes are requested, or additional content outside of the scope of the estimate are requested, then these would be billed per our hourly rate and would be additional to the development cost once the estimated hours for project completion has been exceeded.

Edmund Price and Marco Conti have advanced training and education in website design, graphic design, and web scripting languages. During the development process we use advanced image editors and coding tools, and will hand code as necessary. Since we’ve been designing websites professionally for nearly two decades we have experience working with the earliest HTML and CSS versions. Juliana Appler, and the other web professionals we work with, were chosen since they have proven expertise in their area of specialty.

Edmund Price has many years of technical experience writing for diverse businesses and institutions; this experience includes training and writing in the field of print journalism, hospitality training and management relations (employee manuals, reference lists/tests, training agendas), business proposals in the design industry, and a degree in Liberal Arts which included tutoring college students on the proper use of English and how to organize thoughts and convey words effectively. In addition, Edmund has been building websites professionally since 2002; this experience has provided a clear sense of what is necessary in regard to the effective conveyance of text content.

We provide shared Linux hosting through HostGator. Our least expensive option is $75/year, and includes free SSL with 1,500 MB of space and 20,000 MB of bandwidth per month. We can also recommend a good hosting provider per your specific needs.

We primarily work with WooCommerce for WordPress. We also have experience with PayPal using their button and shopping cart functionality, OSCommerce, and ZenCart.  In addition we’ve assisted clients with the popular online hosted template systems including Wix, Weebly, Squarespace, GoDaddy, and Shopify.

We will build a site for you no matter where you live, yet we require a 50% deposit (USD) for websites outside of the United States.

We specialize in local, on-page SEO.  Per our hourly rate we will evaluate your web presence and review your industry and top business competitors, and from this provide you detailed recommendations on the website and content changes needed to improve your website performance and your site’s organic search ranking.  We can also provide a recommended backlinks list, sites that you should submit to.  All the website we developed include general SEO measures, yet we also offer an advanced optimization service, often needed for competitive industries such as legal, accounting, and contractors.

Social Media marketing is a pretty broad area, and for this reason we focus on the most popular and commonly used platforms for business. These include Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Blogs, Instagram, and Houzz.   Our service includes social media page creation, settings configuration, content additions, and routine maintenance.  You can learn more about how we assist our clients with each of these on our social media page.

When a change is made to a page a previous version will be stored in your internet browser’s cache. Cache refresh is typically based upon one’s individual browser (IE, Edge, Firefox, Chrome, etc) settings to ensure that pages load fast. In most cases all you need to do is refresh the page a couple of times; yet you may need to go into your browser settings and clear the cache to see the updated pages (especially true with Chrome and mobile phones). Note that there are also cache managers on hosting servers than will affect the page update time, and some websites use an htaccess script that will define a website’s cache settings.

Once the final payment has been received we will provide any documentation provided with your CMS theme, and can assist you with finding additional information online. We can also provide a PDF guide on how to make changes to the main content areas, as well as additional training by phone or video per our hourly rate.

E. Curtis Designs is a small web agency owned and operated by Edmund Price, with the assistance of Marco Conti and Juliana Appler.  You can learn more about our individual areas of focus on our team page. Other design professionals may be employed to assist with a portion of a project upon a case by case basis (which will be disclosed to the client where applicable), though all work is managed by and overseen by the owner, and all projects are completed in-house.

Many of the current web developers have very little experience, so often use a “one size fits all” approach when it comes to design. What I mean by this is that they will use the same layouts and development platform regardless of what’s best for the business.

We differ from many of the current designers since we choose unique, modern layouts per the needs of the business, which we customize using modern CSS and quality graphics. In addition, we work work with all common development platforms, not “just WordPress” as most new designers do. We also have extensive experience with content presentation, graphic design, copy-writing, and SEO.

While I don’t schedule in-person meetings, I am pleased to schedule an initial phone meeting per your availability, or if you prefer we can schedule a zoom meeting.  That being said, experience has shown that it generally works best to discuss the website specifics through email to allow for the inclusion of detailed development information and online links and resources.  When emailing us development resources can be provided as emails attachments, or through a file sharing utility (popular free options include Dropbox, Google Drive, and WeTransfer). You can also mail a CD/DVD to our physical location.

Upon site completion we provide low cost site updates, and in some cases will make site changes without additional cost, especially in cases where a page can be easily improved upon. Our primary goal is that our clients are fully satisfied, and we will make every effort to ensure that you love the work that we do.